Wé Ani turns 25 today. Last spring when she auditioned for American Idol her protean voice began drilling a hole in my soul.
Due more to what was going on in my life than her talent, her equally powerful performances on The Voice in 2016 didn’t have that lasting effect.
Her career is a story of strong family support, raw talent (dancing, acting, classical voice training), and diligence.[1]
I’ll let my notes from 2023’s last post introduce the rest of this one:
. . . Harlem-born performer Wé Ani (b. 1999) [is] the most versatile, and powerful, pop singer I’ve ever heard, whose voice salves my charred soul and never fails to plaster a smile on my face. My wife and I had first seen her in 2016 on The Voice (when she went by “Wé McDonald”).
A physically different (almost unrecognizably so) Wé competed in last season’s (2023) American Idol . . . She can belt like nobody’s business, folk her way through any ballad (guitar and all), or rock it out, or out-Broadway any veteran of The Great White Wé, I mean, Way.
There seem to be at least a half dozen Wé Anis: after watching any two videos, I sincerely wonder, “Is that the same singer?” . . .
And then there’s the uncanny sonic chasm between her childlike speaking pitch and her robust, gritty singing voice: she says she wants to be taken seriously, but “it’s not easy sounding like a 12-year-old at 23.” The simile that comes to my mind is fiction’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (minus the creepy associations): she makes a fool of anyone who prejudges her talent on that basis. . . .
She’s also a modest and charming interviewee (sans tatoos, nose ring, acrylic claws and other accoutrements of female celebrityhood): consider one from 2018 and another from September.
Wé’s voice and musical choices take me back to the day, about sixty years, when pop music entered my life, washing away life’s dirt as images of war, assassinations, and race riots washed across the TV screen.
Her voice is more than pleasant: it’s a delivery system for aesthetic endorphins, an oasis and tonic for my soul.
But the above text is so much blather. Why not taste and see for yourself?
For my convenience, and maybe yours as well, I’ve compiled a list of links to Wé’s online videos. Whenever the mood arises, I can compare and contrast the her Hollywood-financed production numbers and her more modest home studio recordings.
I suggest starting with Feeling Good (associated with Nina Simone), the blind audition that got the four Voice coaches to turn their chairs. They were not expecting that speaking voice.
Later that season, she belted covers of No More Drama (Mary J. Blige), Home (Stephanie Mills), Take Me to Church, Maybe (a duet with Lauren Diaz), Love on the Brain (Rihanna). and God Bless the Child, of which only the audio is available. In Ave Maria, her duet with Voice coach Alicia Keys, Wé exhibits the upper range of her singing, evidence of her classical training.
Soon after that competition she honored Gershwin Prize recipient Tony Bennett with a stunning ballad version of Steve Wonder’s For Once in My Life (which the Library of Congress audience rewarded with a standing ovation).
At home, she recorded the folk-pop hit Shallow. Again, the “look and feel” of each performance is different from that of every other.
Between The Voice and America Idol she performed (in venues public and private): Dream On (2017), Chandelier (2018) and, in 2019, Broken Wings, Never Enough and two of special favorites of mine: Marvin’s Room Remix (home studio) and Alessia Cara’s 7 Days.
In 2020, she gave us a version of Queen, Kanye West’s Heartless, and (another personal favorite) Amy Winehouse’s Stronger than Me.
Again, is that the same artist in each video? Yes, of course it is, but . . . ?
A year later, she released two playful videos White Chocolate and Love Overtime.
Last year, shorn of baby fat, Wé auditioned for American Idol. After chatting with the judges in her childlike pitch, she let her performance dispel their skepticism. (At the 0.54-second mark of this, listen to her speak, and then sing, “My name is Wé” at a Voice guest coach’s request.)
Maybe you’ll feel what the Idol judges felt when she roared Demi Lovato’s Anyone.
She followed that audition with one soul-throttling performance after another: Hit ‘em Up Style, a jazz cabaret duet with Pjae; Ain’t No Way, channeling Aretha (which gets me every time I watch it); Edge of Midnight (Miley Cyrus); Skyfall (Adele); This Is Me (from The Greatest Showman); Something’s Got a Hold on Me, an Etta James headbanger; and the transcendently beautiful I Have Nothing in which Wé puts one in mind of The Voice (Whitney Houston, not the singing contest) without impersonating her; Uninvited after its composer Alanis Morrisette coached her; Perfect, a duet with Warren Peay to the delight of its creator, Ed Sheeran; Into the Unknown (Frozen II); and The Climb (Cyrus again).
Wé must now figure out her career’s next steps. There is, she says, but “a small, small, small window of opportunity” for her to decide on her musical lane. (See Re-introducing Myself, a 2021 retrospective-prospective monologue addressed to fans.) At the 10:00 mark she laments that at 21 she still sounds “cute” (except when singing volcanically).
In 2018, Steve Adubato’s One on One interview brought out Wé’s reflective side. A week before her October 1, 2022 NJPAC concert—her first time opening for another artist (Monica)—Richard Bannon got Wé to reveal her perspective on the past few years.
While I do enjoy her recent productions (see the list below), they don’t (in my opinion) show off her versatility and power as impressively as her earlier ones:
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- To the Moon: Fox5 TV performance or the video short
- Flowers (short video)
- Keep Dancing and Be Yourself (Why You Gotta Be This or That) (short video)
- Disgusted (short video)
- Old News (short video)
- Doja Cat (short video; rapping in her speaking voice)
- Good Burger 2 promo (short; first time on a soundtrack)
Is the girl in the Nickolodeon T-shirt, in the last bulleted short, the same as the singer in 7 Days? Or Love Overtime ?
Then there’s her latest (January 12), The Standard.
Wishing her every success, I nevertheless need more songs like Marvin’s Room (Remix) for my Wé Ani fix. But if they earn her a market share huge enough to let her write her ticket, then more power to her.
In the short run, at least, she may favor one genre or style over another. If she becomes phenomenally successful, which I fervently wish, she’ll be in a position to sing what she wants. In the meantime, this treasure trove of music will keep that smile plastered on my mug.
Note
[1] After her 2023 American Idol audition Wé addressed a judge’s curiosity about her name. She said “Wé” means “diligence” in Swahili. (See this around the 3:06 mark). I can’t verify her claim, which I’m sure reflects what her family has told her. The word bidii is Swahili for “diligence”; perhaps her name is rooted in a regional dialect of that language. (Besides the standard dialect, Kiunguja, there are Kimvita, Kiamu, Kingwana, and Kipemba.) “Ani” echoes “Ann” or “Annie,” the name of her maternal grandmother. (Wé’s mother is Jackie Bland McDonald.) Given Wé’s career path, it’s interesting that Ann Bland is the daughter of R&B singer Billy Bland (1932-2017; not his contemporary, Blues singer Bobby “Blue” Bland [1930-2013]). That makes Wé Billy Bland’s great-grandaughter.
